We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

“Hmm?”

“But then what happened?” he asked, ever perceptive.

“She found he was not as perfect as she thought. He had lied to her. Or rather, he’d hidden the truth of who he was,” Zafira clarified.

“She discovered he had flaws,” Nasir suggested.

Zafira nodded, though it didn’t discount the secrets Misk had kept. “And I think she needs time to understand that flaws make us whole. Real. He’s not terrible, or a monster.”

Nasir didn’t respond, and Zafira inwardly cringed at her use of the word “monster.” You absolute fool.

“I don’t—I don’t play games,” he said, eventually, as they turned down a street far too wide to be an alley.

“You do now,” she teased, only to find him serious. Disturbed, almost. At once, she realized it had nothing to do with games, but what this specific one entailed. “You’re allowed to dream, you know. To imagine.”

He said nothing.

She could sense something—someone, watching them from the shadows. Several domes glinted in the near distance. The palace.

“I would take you for iced cream,” Nasir said suddenly.

Zafira held her breath.

“Isn’t that … what you wanted, once?”

She vaguely remembered making mention of it on Sharr, but it didn’t matter now. Bakdash was gone. If that lavender door was still intact, it would stand closed forever. No one was left to open it, to fill its walls with love.

Even if some of the people in her village remained, it wouldn’t be the same. The air would be spooled with ghosts, the streets thick with the dead.

“That iced cream shop—it’s gone now,” she said softly. Renowned across the kingdom, gone just like that.

“You said this was a story,” Nasir protested, and she could hear the frown in his voice.

His utter confusion tore a laugh out of her, and she fell back against him, nestling into the nook of his outstretched arms. It was only a heartbeat, and then realization struck them both like a snake. Nasir went still. Zafira straightened. The Jawarat observed her without a word.

After a moment, Nasir audibly swallowed.

“We’re nearly there,” he said quietly.

Zafira nodded, shifting the book in her hands.

She’d been at ease. Not intoxicated by lust or desire or need, just comfortable. With that one revelation came a flood of more: How she had come to expect his heated gaze and pensive smiles, and how well she fit in his arms. How he cared for her, in a way she thought an assassin could not. How she cared for him, as she once vowed she never would for anyone, least of all the Prince of Death.

Nasir slowed Afya to a walk as they neared the Sarasin palace in the center of Leil. The streets were fuller, likely because of the lighter-than-black skies, less marred by darkness. In it, she could see the grandness that once prevailed. The details carved into every edifice, proof that here they once valued life.

It was bittersweet, in a way. Hopeful, too. For if the Sarasins valued life once, it meant they could do so again. It made her think of her village, and how, despite how hopeless so much seemed, she had still found it in herself to feed her people, to care for them.

What Sarasin needed, first, was someone to stand for them. To unite them, make them worthy of their place in Arawiya.

They stepped through a glade of date palms to a sight that crowded Zafira’s throat. She had basked in the ethereal lure of the Demenhune palace and the majestic beast of the Sultan’s, but there was something about the Sarasin palace that stole her breath away.

It emanated a dark beauty she had come to associate with all things Sarasin. Where the other two palaces sprawled, this one towered. Minarets rose to the cloudless skies, and the enormous obsidian dome in the center was cut with countless arched windows. Scrolling florals were carved into the gray stone, the slant of the sun deepening the rises and dips.

Zafira had spent all her life thinking Sarasins to be monsters, and yet here was beauty she had never expected. They tethered Afya to a post to the side of the palace and sprinted to a smaller set of gates. Black-and-silver liveried guards were making the rounds, narrow swords set against their shoulders.

She slid a glance at Nasir. What was it like to return to the place of one’s blood and know one was not welcome? There was a price on his head. Even if there weren’t, he’d killed the previous caliph in cold blood.

Nasir dragged her to the shadows, surveying the surroundings as he spoke. “Raw materials come in twice a day. The carts should arrive soon.”